The Story of Old Favorites

16 Huntley Street — The Coach House

The Book Service, also known as The Canadian Forum Book Search Room — the largest general book service of its kind in Canada — and The Canadian Forum office were located at 16 Huntley Street, in a quaint coach house behind 565 Jarvis Street, Toronto,  Woodsworth House, the C.C.F.'s Ontario headquarters. These quarters quickly became too small to house the growing inventory, and the first Old Favorites Bookshop location opened at 36 Yonge Street in 1954. Old Favorites quickly became the place to go in Toronto to find used, rare, and out-of-print books.  What was the C.C.F.? The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) was a Canadian democratic socialist and social democratic political party founded in Calgary, Alberta, in 1932 during the Great Depression. Established through an alliance of progressive farm organizations, labor unions, socialist groups, and leftist intellectuals (such as the League for Social Reconstruction), the party aimed to replace unrestrained capitalism with planned, cooperative economic democracy.The C.C.F. was led federally by J.S. Woodsworth and later M.J. Coldwell. In 1961, the C.C.F. joined forces with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) to establish the New Democratic Party (NDP). What Was Happening at 16 Huntley Street in the 1940s, when bothe Lou and Kay were there? During the 1940s, it operated as a bustling intellectual, cultural, and publishing annex: The Book Service / Progressive Book Club: 16 Huntley Street housed the Ontario C.C.F.'s literature distribution wing and the Progressive Book Club (Canada), which distributed democratic socialist and progressive political literature across the country. Editorial Office of The Canadian Forum: The coach house served as an office for The Canadian Forum, an influential Canadian cultural and political magazine closely tied to C.C.F. intellectuals and social democratic thought. Birth of "The Old Favorites Bookshop": In the early postwar period, the book operations managed at 16 Huntley Street grew into The Old Favorites Bookshop (co-founded by Lou Morris, the business manager of The Canadian Forum), which later moved to Yonge Street and became one of Toronto’s most famous antiquarian and rare book institutions. The area: Post-War Transformation & Political Activism (1920s–1950s)By the 1920s, Toronto's wealthiest families migrated north to newer enclaves like Rosedale and Forest Hill. The grand Victorian structures of Upper Jarvis were heavily demolished or repurposed. The area transitioned into a dense neighborhood of rooming houses, civic headquarters, and political organizations. Structures like 16 Huntley Street and the "Grey Lady" mansion became operational hubs for radical intellectualism, Canadian literary publishing, and the C.C.F. political movement.   "A free society depends on the right to read widely, to question, to disagree, and to decide for ourselves what a book means." Louis Morris.